Paper plant project sparks protests

A villager from Guochengsi village in Xianning shows what he calls huang shan, or waste mountain, after it was burned to make way for pulpwood plantations as part of a paper mill project. Photos by Feng Yongbin / China Daily
Work to destroy a large area of woodland as part of a government-backed paper mill project in Central China has sparked protests from ecologists and farmers.

About 146,000 mu (9,733 hectares) of hillside forest in Xianning, a prefecture-level city in Hubei province, has already been hacked down under the orders from the local authorities.

Residents in surrounding villages, many of whom use the woodland to grow trees and fruits, said they only found out about the slash-and-burn plans after the first bushfire was started.

"We weren't informed about the fire," said Wang Xiangzhong, a 48-year-old villager in Tongshan county, who found his forestland ablaze in March. He recalled that strong winds blew the inferno beyond its planned boundaries and took firefighters and villagers three days to extinguish.

"It was only after the incident we learned our land had been given (by the government) to a pulp paper company," he said.

In an effort to cash in on the city's rich forestry resources and boost growth, Xianning signed a deal in 2008 with Chenming Paper Group, a leading firm based in Shandong province, for pulp plantations and a manufacturing plant with an estimated annual capacity of a million tons.

Under the agreement, the city will lease 1 million mu of woodland to Chenming for 50 years, with the company paying landowners 12.8 yuan ($2) per mu per year - considerably less than the average 30 yuan for similar projects across China, according to GF Securities, industry analysts based in Guangdong province.

In phase 1, the city's six county-level authorities have been assigned to plant poplars and pines (both ideal for pulping and papermaking) across 300,000 mu of cleared woodland by the end of next year.

To meet the target, authorities have been organizing teams to carry out lian shan (it translates as clearing the mountain), which involves cutting down the original trees and starting fires to remove residual trunks and leaves.

In Doumenqiao, a village in Chibi county, villagers have already cleared a patch of about 200 mu and planted red pine saplings.

Ma Yanlin, the village's Party secretary, said his first-phase assignment of 5,000 mu is an "arduous task" made harder by the residents' reluctance to take part. He insisted, however, that all villagers had approved the paper mill project and that it will generate economic returns and job opportunities.

Chenming will pay 320 yuan for every mu of pulpwood they plant: 200 yuan for lian shan and digging holes for the saplings, and 120 for tree planting, said Ma.

The first installment will arrive in July, explained the Party secretary, while the rest will be paid in September, when villagers will need to replant any dead saplings.

When contacted to comment, Gao Jianjun, director of Xianning forestry bureau's administrative office, played down the authority's role in the project, saying it was simply a deal between Chenming and the villagers. The government had acted only as a "service provider", he said.

The major task for the bureau is to transform 86,000 mu of "low-yield woodland" every year into plantations of timber and fruit trees, said Gao, who added that cutting down natural forest to make way for cash crops is strictly prohibited.

"Low-yield forests usually bring little economic benefit because their fruit or timber production is lower than average," he said.

A more straightforward term for low-yield hillside forest is huang shan, or "waste mountain", which is the way Ma described the mountains surrounding his village.

Although their slopes are covered with a mix of mature trees, such as pines, oaks and Chinese maples, and all are in natural and good condition, the cadre insisted the mountains "have no economic value".
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